Florida lawmakers introduced House Bill 1223, legislation that aims to prohibit a person from describing themselves or others with pronouns besides the ones they were born with in the context of the Florida education system. Rep. Adam Anderson (R-Palm Harbor) proposed the legislation Tuesday.
The bill requires “specified policies relating to person’s sex at public K-12 educational institutions.” The bill summary says it “prohibits specified actions relating to use of certain titles and pronouns; and revises requirements for instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.” It will require that “personal titles and pronouns” used in schools for kindergarten through 12th grade match the identity assigned at birth. The bill says that “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun” that does not match their biological sex.
In short, if the bill is passed, employees, contractors, or students of a Florida public K-12 school will not be required to refer to others using a preferred personal title or pronoun if it does not “match their sex.” Employees or contractors will in fact be banned from using titles or pronouns to refer to a student that does not correlate with their assigned sex at birth.
Anderson’s proposal explains that this new bill builds on 2021’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, which was the precursor to the controversial House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education that garnered nation-wide attention and controversy, and has been infamously dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
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